Tuesday, 5 August 2008

A Quickie!

I am still officially on blog hiatus but wanted to share three bits of good news.

1. I won the limerick competition over on Lucy Diamond's blog and my amazing prize is a box full of newly published books from Lucy's publishers. Can't WAIT to receive them.

By the way, Lucy's new book "Over You" is out now. I totally LOVED her last book "Any Way You Want Me" so go buy the new one on Amazon (or in your local bookshop) asap (I've ordered my copy)!

2. Erotic short story site A Woman's Goodnight have been in touch to say they'd like to buy an erotic story I submitted to them back in November. It's the one, and only, erotic story I've ever written so I'm pretty chuffed. It's the only story I've written under a pseudonym too (you'd understand why if you saw how smutty it is! ;0)) and no, I'm not going to tell you what that name is!

3. After two rejections in a row Norah from Take a Break got in touch today to tell me she'd like to buy one of my stories for Fiction Feast. It's the first story I ever wrote for my Story A Fortnight group which makes me hugely proud. That's three womag sales from the group now (the first two were by Maddie and French Poppy) and the quality of the stories we're producing are so good I just KNOW there's going to be lots lots more (she said modestly on behalf of the group :o))

Still no news from BigShot agent on the rewrite but that's okay, with the stress of trying to rent out my flat and find a new one in London that's been the last thing on my mind recently! But I HAVE been thinking about novel #2 and have decided to put it on the backburner for a while. Something that's hugely important to me is that writing should be enjoyable (or else why do it?) and I haven't enjoyed writing novel #2 for some time now.

But.

I AM very excited about the idea I've got for novel #3 (which will be my first non-supernatural woman's fiction book). I'm not going to rush into this idea like I did with novel #2 and am spending a lot of time thinking about the characters and formulating the plot. Talking of which I can thoroughly recommend this book:

I think the big mistake I made with novel #2 was not plotting enough before I started writing. That's not a mistake I aim to make with novel #3. I also didn't get to know my characters enough before I put fingers to keyboard and this time around I genuinely want to care about them. When I wrote novel #1 at superspeed (under 4 months, speedy for me!) I really, really cared about my characters, thought about them all the time and hurt when they hurt. Not so with novel #2.

Congratulations on your win and on the erotic and of Fiction Feast sale.When you're back for real go have a look at the map and model on my blog - you might fancy doing something like that for novel 3 - it really helped me know my characters inside out when I made them.Over You is brilliant, I didn't want it to end.Hope the flat renting/hunting is going well'See' you soonPat

I picked up a book from the 'erotic' section in Waterstones earlier in the week, just to see what it was all about. I read about four lines before blushing, putting it down (with just the right hint of irritation to suggestion that I'd picked it up by mistake), glancing around to make sure no one I know had seen me, and moved on swiftly to the next section...

About Me

Author of psychological thrillers The Accident ('Before I Wake' in the US) and The Lie.I started my career writing rom-com novels as Cally Taylor - my first novel 'Heaven Can Wait' was published by Orion in the UK and in 13 other countries and my second, 'Home For Christmas', was made into a feature film - but I couldn't resist the urge to write something darker. Currently plotting my third psychological thriller.